The Apartments - In and Out of the Light - LP/CD/DD - Out September 18th 2020
Briefly a member of Brisbane's iconic Go-Betweens, Peter Milton Walsh didn't quite click with messrs McLennan and Forster ("we're sun, he's rain"), opting to forge his own path with his band The Apartments scribing a string of thoughtful albums since the mid-'80s, including the Rough Trade release The Evening Visits..and Stays For Years which garnered further attention in the '90s after the song Mr Somewhere got respectfully covered by 4AD supergroup-of-sorts This Mortal Coil. Fast-forward some twenty-five years and Walsh is continuing to be his very own rain to Brisbane's sun with a short but sweet album, with a sting in its tail and a bite from its jaws.
Recorded during the global pandemic in various locations and issued by French imprint Talitres, In and Out of the Light is eight songs long, predominantly acoustic and really rather moreish. Walsh's fragile world-weary vocals might appeal to lovers of Destroyer or The Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan, while the music is ably decorated with piano, harmonies and trumpets.
Opener Pocketful of Sunshine isn't a jolly knees-up with radio-play awaiting it anytime soon but it sets a pretty prescedent for what follows. Potential single Write Your Way Out Of Town is a slow-paced funereal and reflective song that ranks as one of Walsh's finest, while Where You Used To Be positively creaks with unrequited love, unfilled wishes and downright melancholia.
Listening to the likes of What's Beauty To Do?, I wonder if Grant McLennan and Robert Forster might have been a little hasty not sticking with Walsh - here's an actual pop-song to challenge their marvellous Bachelor Kisses. But enough of the past - In and Out of the Light bears all the hallmarks of an album that will have fans weeping and live audiences captivated. Even the bitter I Don't Give a Fuck About You Anymore, with its virtually spat-out expletives, is charming enough to be embraced. And if you can't love the closing The Fading Light, we need to have words.
8/10